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Archive: Family Circus

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Kids these days

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Blondie, 6/5/24

The number one thing that makes me feel like an old person is my stiff right knee and hip, but number two, coming pretty close behind, is the fact that so many things, ranging from thoughtful essays to instruction manuals, that 10 years ago would’ve been written out as text now only exist in the form of YouTube videos. I don’t want to watch a video! I read very quickly and find videos that mostly consist of someone just talking to be annoying! Often I am in public and do not want to annoy everyone around me! Sometimes they’re good for real how-to instructional stuff but more often than not a written essay with some pictures would be just as good if not better and also would be easier to search through quickly to find the relevant bits. Anyway, my point is that I read today’s Blondie and immediately thought, “Finally, Blondie accurately depicts what young people are like for once — they all think you should learn everything from YouTube and it fucking sucks,” but then I instantly recoiled in horror. Is this what I’ve become? Someone who cheers when Blondie sticks it to the kids these days? My feeling of deep shame almost, but not quite, wiped all thoughts of how much I hate most internet video from my mind.

Intelligent Life, 6/5/24

I guess I haven’t talked about what Intelligent Life’s whole deal is in the few times I’ve posted it here, so: it’s whole deal is that it’s about a number of unpleasant people who are obsessed with “nerd” franchises (i.e., most of modern film and TV entertainment) in the most boring way possible. Anyway, today’s strip pissed me off because, yes, Meta’s use of user content for its dumb AI offerings is bad, and Emperor Palpatine is bad, but Emperor Palpatine never did anything like the real stuff Meta is doing that they’re talking about here. I saw those movies. He mostly did evil space wizard stuff and evil space politics stuff. He barely ever even used computers! Can we please be serious here.

Family Circus, 6/5/24

Without telling his wife, Big Daddy Keane has been taking Billy to one of those barbershops that hasn’t “gone woke” and starting obeying Big Government’s oppressive laws against trepanation, in an attempt reduce the internal pressure responsible for his eldest son’s grotesquely shaped head. The treatments are unpleasant, but they’re starting to show results!

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A good joke spoiled

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Dustin, 5/25/24

Syndicated newspaper comic strip creators love golf for some accursed reason, but I have to say that they’re generally pretty good about only doing jokes about aspects of golf that non-golfers know about through cultural osmosis, like that you can lose your ball in a sand or water trap, or that everyone who plays it fucking hates it for some reason. Today’s Dustin, however, requires you to know whether 112 is a good or a bad score. I mean, I guess it’s clear from context that it’s bad, but still: I think this is over the line. It made me dedicate some thought to the awful “sport of kings” [note to self: wait, is that horse racing? double-check this] when all I wanted to do is find out what specific kind of terrible asshole Dustin’s dad was going to be today. Unacceptable! Save it for your side gig submitting New Yorker-style single-panel cartoons to Golf Digest, creeps!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/25/24

“Living their retro-diner-roots-country life to the fullest” makes it sound very much like we’re seeing some unpleasant rockabilly LARP situation, possibly in a corporate “immersive experience” theme park run by whatever hedge fund currently owns the rights to the Johnny Rockets IP. And that’s the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is that this is foreplay!

Family Circus, 5/25/24

Ah, man, this is great. Now I know that whenever we see Billy dressed up to play sports, he feels like he’s under a microscope and is miserable most of the time! I’m a major Billy hater as you all well know, so this is a big win for me.

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Josh gets critical

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Daddy Daze, 5/4/24

Look, I’m just going to say it: I find the Daddy Daze baby, with his fixed, manic smile, his uncanny ability to move about and manipulate objects despite his infancy, and his inscrutable language of “ba”s, to be off-putting and frankly a little scary. So no, I’m not on board with the Daddy Daze daddy telling him to go out and start collecting memories from the very brains of his hapless victims.

Family Circus, 5/4/24

I know the upcoming Garfield movie is a big media event and the studio is making lots of deals to cross-promote it everywhere. I’m just a little surprised and frankly disappointed that the Catholic Church decided to get in on the action.

Beetle Bailey, 5/4/24

Wait, if you’re supposed to wear civvies to the General’s party, why’s he wearing a uniform? I was going to say that Beetle Bailey was drawing on its deep knowledge of contemporary military culture and uniform rules for the nuances of this joke, but then I realized how absurd that was, had a good laugh, and then went to lie down. Anyway, I think it’s just a mistake.